Putting Cher to rest: How to curb the ‘Valley Girl’ lilt

Ask any girl who grew up in the '90s: Clueless was largely to blame for shaping many a young woman's image of female sexuality. When you consider that Cher famously applied her reasoning skills to such matters as the direct correlation between the amount of skin one shows and the incidence of sex on the minds of men, it stands as no surprise that she inspired a die-hard legacy of girls who drawled out their "whatevers" with annoying finesse.

Of course, this is a learned behavior that wields its power from, you guessed it – social values, pop culture and the media. Attractive women are more quintessentially "feminine," and so the cycle goes (a recent UC Davis study found that attractive female leads in movies are seen as better role models). The important question at stake here is: how do you get your daughter to stop sounding like a ditz?

While a critical viewing of Clueless is only likely to backfire on you, aim to introduce your girls to a solid role model to help balance her picture of what femininity can look like. So she picked up some new mall slang from the latest blockbuster? Arrange a viewing of Mean Girls instead: Lindsay Lohan's character, for a brief period the token "hot girl," gets visibly better results when she stops hiding her intelligence and starts acting like a dignified young woman (If only LiLo followed suit!).

A great dad himself, Armin speaks not only as a specialist in parenting, but as a parent himself.
Hailed by Time Magazine as "the superdad's superdad," Armin Brott has been building better fathers for more than a decade. As the author of six bestselling books on fatherhood, he's helped millions of men around the world become the fathers they want to be—and that their children need them to be.
He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, American Baby, Parenting, Child, Men's Health, The Washington Post, and dozens of other major publications and websites.
Armin has been a guest on hundreds of radio and television shows, including Today, CBS Overnight, Fox News, and Politically Incorrect, and his work on fatherhood has been featured in such places as Glamour, Time, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and many others.
Armin is the host of "Positive Parenting," a weekly radio program which airs in the San Francisco Bay Area and a number of other markets. He also does the "DaddyCast" podcast. As a trusted spokesperson, Armin speaks on fatherhood around the country and teaches classes for expectant and new dads. Armin lives with his wife and three children in Oakland, California.

Make Your Own Fresh, Healthy Baby Food With the MiAllegro 9090 Series Immersion Hand Blender

By Armin Brott

Good quality baby food is expensive and is often nothing more than just vegetables and water. So why not save lots of money by simply making your own fresh baby food? You don’t need to be a chef to steam carrots or boil peas, and with the >more